It’s not just that Dwight Howard has suffered some dings to his popularity lately. It’s worse than that. The smiley center might be the most reviled man in the NBA right now, thanks to the two-year debacle aptly known as the "Dwightmare".

According to Q Scores, the company that tracks data relating to how the population views celebrities, Howard has undergone a drubbing lately. In a survey taken this spring, 65 percent of self-described sports fans said they recognized Howard, and just 12 percent had a positive view of him. Those with a negative view of him: 25 percent.

And that was before he bolted Los Angeles last weekend. As Henry Schafer, Q Scores vice president, said, “I would say those kinds of numbers are rare.”

By way of comparison, the average basketball player has a positive Q Score of 15, and a negative of 16. There are certain players who carry high negative Q Scores, but they’re usually balanced by high positives—what Schafer calls “polarizing” players. In the most recent study of sports fans, Kobe Bryant registered a negative Q Score of 25, but a positive of 24. LeBron James posted a 21 negative score, but his positive score was 25.

Howard, though, isn’t all that polarizing. He is just widely disliked.

Dating back to late November 2011, as his career careened through trade demands, a fired coach, back surgery, a big-market move, another fired coach, a big-market flop and a series of complaints about one of the most storied franchises in the NBA, Howard’s popularity has been left to languish like so much roadkill.

More than twice as many fans have a negative view of him as those who have a positive view. In the same study taken last year among sports fans, Howard had a negative Q Score of 18, and a positive of 17—both his negative and his positive numbers have taken huge swings in the wrong direction.

“Fans were even-keeled about Howard before last year,” Schafer said. “That is one of the strange things, that going to the Lakers worked in the opposite direction that you’d expect. Most players going to a team like that, they become more popular. He saw a really significant increase in the negative score in just one year.”

But all is not lost for Howard, who was one of the NBA’s most popular players back when he was palling around with Nate Robinson in the slam-dunk contest five years ago. If there is a road back to image stability, no player has better mapped it out for Howard than the last elite free agent to change teams, James.

In January 2010, James registered a Q Score among the general population (not just sports fans) of 24 positive and 22 negative. After his famed “Decision” fiasco, James’ numbers went even more haywire than Howard’s—his positive Q Score dropped to 14, and his negative ballooned to 39.

James, though, has since recovered his image nicely. It helped that he finally broke through and won a championship in 2012, and followed that by leading Team USA to a gold medal in the London Olympics. He has won the last two MVP awards, and has been the MVP of the last two Finals.

Excelling on such big stages, being open with the media, appearing in a series of Samsung commercials that showed him with his kids and friends—since the summer of 2010, James has been increasingly humanized as a person while at the same time pushing his game to even greater superhuman levels.

One of the keys to James’ ability to bounce back, image-wise, was that his transgression didn’t involve a violation of the law or reveal any sort of bad character—it was just a free-agent move to a new city, one viewed as selfish.

“For LeBron James to rate as highly as he does now after just two years, that is really the fast-track to recovery,” Schafer said. “It is made easier by the fact that there was no criminal or social indiscretion involved. For players who have that stigma, it can be five-to-seven years before the image starts to come back. Players like Dwight Howard can learn lessons from what LeBron has done.”

Of course, Howard might never be an MVP in the league, and though the Rockets figure to be improved, they might not quite be a championship contender. If Howard plays for the U.S. in the next Olympics, he will be more role player than star. James’ talent and team gave him advantages over Howard.

It’s difficult to say how the move to Houston will be viewed by sports fans or the public (new Q Score ratings from the general population will be out later this month). It probably won’t have the overwhelming negative impact that the move to Miami had for James, who was seen as abandoning his hometown Cavaliers for the flash of the Heat.

This is Howard’s second move in two years, so maybe his negatives are already as bad as they are going to get. Plus, he made the rare choice to go from the league’s glamor team to a relatively nondescript one.

Even if that buys him some points among fans, Howard still faces a significant challenge. “He definitely took strides in the wrong direction,” Schafer said. “He has a lot of image-repairing to do.”